It’s typical for people to have many microcareers, but I have been an English teacher all my working life. Almost two decades, in fact. It’s a decision that marinates and gains depth of flavour with time, for my love for the English language has grown over the years.

Perhaps it would be best if I tell you about my background. I first taught General Paper - a subject that requires students to have strong argumentation skills - at a junior college to pre-tertiary students. Subsequently, I taught oral communication, report writing and critical thinking skills to polytechnic students. After that, I taught English as a Foreign Language to elementary and junior high school students under the Japan Exchange Teaching Programme.

Japan opened my eyes to a lot of things, but reality beckoned, so I packed my bags and went home to teach Foundational English to teenagers at a vocational secondary school. During this period, an opportunity for me to teach English at an elementary school came up. I grabbed the bull by the horns and was attached to this elementary school for three years. Last but least, I returned to the vocational school after my attachment and now serve as a literacy coach for students who have dyslexia.

Typically, people exclaim, “Woah” when I share my job history with them. I don’t necessarily think that my credentials are all that impressive because I hop from job to job like a bee that sips nectar from flower to flower, so I don’t accumulate expertise in terms of teaching at a particular level. Nonetheless, my limiting gap is also my strength since I have had the experience to teach English at different educational levels. I have been exposed to its intricacies, quirks and nuances from different perspectives!

Did you know that English is a bastard language? Now, I’m not trying to be naughty and use a word that would be frowned upon in polite company. I actually picked up this term during my college linguistics classes. “Bastard language” is a scholarly term! Anyway, I just love how English is non-discriminating and absorbs words and wisdom from the lands it has set foot on like a sponge. Many cultures have left their distinctive imprint on English, which makes it a fascinating keyhole to understanding how foreign languages are structured.

Case in point: English words actually don’t end with the letter ‘i’. If you come across words that end with ‘i’, chances are that they are taken from other languages. Spaghetti, ravioli and paparazzi are from Italian. Taxi may not be Italian, but it is short for taximeter cab.

Another example: The letter ‘G’ has two sounds - the soft g and the hard g. Various words that we use often in daily life, like “get”, “gift” and “give” originated from German. Since German does not have a soft G, these words retain their hard g sound. Cool, right?

All this means that when I become frustrated by English’s maddening idiosyncrasies, I could perhaps take a deep breath and trace the words back to their origins. Sometimes, knowing how a word came about might explain why it is pronounced or spelt differently from other words. I’m constantly amazed at the way English acts like a time capsule, showcasing its diversity in plain sight, yet requiring the individual to unravel its layers determinedly like Sherlock Holmes solving a case.

English may be the closest thing we get to an all-encompassing language, but fun is what makes it truly engaging. From a young age, we are introduced to nursery rhymes and limericks and relish how rhyming words roll off our tongues. Let’s not forget tongue twisters! They never fail to bring out peals of laughter whenever friends compete with one another to see who can rattle them off the fastest.

Since I have had experience in English teaching, I am exposed to lesser-known, though no less fun aspects of the language. Have you heard of hink pink? It’s a special kind of riddle in which the answer comprises two rhyming words. The examples below will give you a clear idea of this intriguing aspect.

Children and adults alike will delight in onomatopoeia. These sound words are a blast to say aloud, conjuring vivid images in our minds and stimulating the imagination. Slight digression: the prevalence of onomatopoeia is one of the aspects I adore about the Japanese language. Back to English, another enjoyable aspect is palindrome, in which words are spelt the same forwards and backwards. Racecar, level and radar belong to this category. Wondering why I paired onomatopoeia and palindrome, here’s a fun fact: James Joyce invented a 12-letter palindrome, tartarrattar (the longest palindrome) to denote the sound of someone knocking on the door.

Now you know!

Wait, you want to know another onomatopoeic word? Your wish is my command. Introducing flibbertigibbet, which has another noteworthy claim to linguistic fame. It contains four Bs, which is the most of any common word. Flibbertigibbet refers to a silly, irresponsible, flighty person, particularly one who chatters constantly.

To round out this section, Bill Bryson said it best, “We have a deep-rooted delight in the comic effect of words in English, and not just in advertising jingles but at the highest level of endeavour.”

Just as English absorbs words from other languages, a particular word can undergo various iterations in terms of meaning after being exposed to different cultures. The word scrumptious is one such example. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this word was first recorded in 1823 to denote “mean, stingy”; It is believed to have originated in England and arrived in America with English settlers. The meaning subsequently evolved in America. First, it meant “small” and “fastidious”; then, it meant “stylish, smart”; finally, it conveyed the meaning of “excellent, marvellous, (of food) very enjoyable, delicious”.

Knowing the history behind scrumptious won’t help me to score a higher grade during exams. Neither would I be likely to bring it up during networking events. Nonetheless, I feel that my life is all the richer because I know such trivia.

In other instances, words fall out of fashion because times have changed, rendering them obsolete. Encountering these words then gives you a peek into olden times and helps you imagine how drastically different the lives of the people then must have been. How drastic? Well, Sprunt is an old Scots word from Roxburgh that means “chasing girls around among the haystacks after dark”. Can you imagine such an activity happening nowadays? People would be hauled to court for violating ladies’ personal space!

This happened to me this year. I was going through the answers to some questions with my students. Now, the specific question escapes me, but I vividly recall someone mentioning spill the tea. As a self-respecting teacher, I promptly corrected her, explaining that the saying ought to be “spill the beans”. I didn’t expect her to emphatically say that I was mistaken and patiently explain spill the tea means “to talk bad about others”. Geez, how do I spell “embarrassed” again?

Anyway, I think it’s so cool that young people always invent new words to express themselves and show that they are a generation distinctive from their parents and grandparents. Millennials invented words like lit and the now ubiquitous adulting; Gen Z have given us rizz, no cap and slay. I don’t know about you, but I expertly weave these words into my conversation with my students to show how hip I am! Cue hashtag humblebrag.

You gotta love English for the wide range of adjectives it provides you to describe stuff. For Mandarin, if I want to describe that my food is delicious, I can only use 好吃 (yummy) or 很好吃 (very yummy). While I can express my delight by saying 使我垂涎三尺 (make me water) or 吃得津津有味 (eat with gusto), these are phrases that describe my reaction towards feasting rather than the deliciousness of the food itself. But let’s look at the wide array of adjectives we use every day to describe our meals: yummy, delicious, delectable, scrumptious, mouthwatering, succulent, heavenly, palatable. So nice to be able to pick and choose from this buffet list!

I think having an abundant pool of adjectives really helps when it comes to expressing one’s emotions. I really love how English comprises word clines for us to specify the intensity of our feeling. Taking anger as an example, we can use words like annoyed, frustrated, agitated, mad, upset, infuriated, irate, outraged and furious. Being able to pinpoint exactly how angry we are helps us to be more aware of our emotional capacity and, hopefully, regulate ourselves better.

Because English has such a rich vocabulary base, it gives me the opportunity to showcase my various personalities. If I wish to be taken seriously (and perhaps even be mistaken for an intellectual), I could purposely deploy academic-sounding words and those complex sentences that seemingly go on forever. When I hope to let my hair down and reveal my light-hearted and playful side, I could switch to more casual language, even using exclamation marks to great effect‼️ I’m not sure if Mandarin and Japanese can empower me to scale up and down the formality/informality spectrum like a pro.

Avid fans of Physical 100 will have heard of Hwaiting, a Konglish word frequently used by the contestants to encourage one another to overcome a challenge. Did you know that Hwaiting is actually borrowed from the English word “Fighting!”? I was quite impressed when I learnt this because the Koreans extracted the essence of Fighting but employed it in a positive sense to give themselves that extra Ooomph to triumph.

Other charming instances of Konglish exist. Take for instance eye shopping, as in window shopping.

As for Janglish, the Japanese like to say “テンションが高たかい” (tenshon ga takai) which translates to high tension when they are excited about something. Normally, we associate tension to describe a stressful and highly strung situation, so I chuckled when I realised how the Japanese gave this high energy level a positive spin. Learning about other varieties of English reminds me of the ingenuity of the human race. That people are always on the lookout for ways to adapt words to describe their unique situation.

English is a vehicle for people to express their innate personalities. Now, I won’t say that I have had much experience with interacting with people from all over the world, but I do know that the British people thrive on sarcasm and irony. I have to admit that I am so clueless about their dry sense of humour that I don’t know whether they are being serious or pulling my leg. I have to say that Singaporeans are quite literal people. Singaporean communication is direct and straightforward, with jokes that are quite easy to get. What I mean to say is, we don’t play with language the way the British do. No undercurrents, no subtext in our style of communication.

Again, I don’t know the Aussies very well, but if their popular slang “I’m not here to fuck spiders” is anything to go by, I will love their in-your-face brand of caustic humour. Right now, I’m trying to use “bloody oath” whenever I can during chats with them. Loving it!

Prior to becoming a literacy coach, I used to think that English is a highly quirky and idiosyncratic language. I couldn’t be more wrong. Guess what? Only 15% of all English words are phonetically irregular, which is amazing considering that English is a bastard language. Even with these phonetically irregular words, they often have certain parts that phonetically regular. So, you just have to memorise the parts that aren’t. Knowing this trivia may encourage foreign learners not to give up in their pursuit of English learning. After all, the path is not as daunting as it seems. If they buckle down to learn phonics and blending of phonemes, they will be able to decode and encode most words, including long sophisticated ones.

Similarly, the need to memorise the past tense form of irregular verbs in English might be a challenging task for people, especially when they are “interfered” by their native language that does not have verb conjugations. However, order exists in this maddening chaos. You can leverage various patterns - such as change in the vowel sound, verbs with -ough, and verbs that stay the same as the base form - to help you memorise all these past tense verbs.

Caution: the Americans may not like how we add -t to some of these verbs instead of -ed!

As the world’s lingual franca, English lets me interact and bond with people from all over the globe. It reminds me that even though I live in a small island nation, I need not confine my mind to its tiny boundaries. The world is vast, with one thousand and one ways of living, and using English unlocks a breathtaking panoramic view of the similarities and differences across world cultures and subcultures. It feels like I’m perched on top of Mount Everest, enjoying this spectacular tapestry. I constantly question the extent to which the values I hold dear are really a reflection of my unique identity, rather than simply a product of my societal upbringing.